Ancient Domains of Mystery
Encyclopedia
Ancient Domains of Mystery, or ADOM, is a roguelike
game by Thomas Biskup
first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos
that invade the world of Ancardia.
Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII
graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeon
s. Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.
from ten races and twenty character class
es, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay, in both subtle and obvious ways. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system, allowing further customization of characters, based on a hierarchical system of prerequisites.
During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quest
s. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment
(lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC
and deity interaction with the character. How one solves a quest can also affect one's alignment, such that a chaotic character seeking redemption can eventually become lawful through his or her actions (or vice versa).
ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure game
s like Zork
as to the hack-and-slash
of sibling games like Angband.
Besides background corruption, some powerful chaotic artifacts can actually cause the character to become corrupted merely by carrying them. Other, less powerful chaotic artifacts only corrupt when actively invoked or wielded. Generally, most artifacts and magic items are safe to carry and use, and only the most powerful items affect corruption rates.
. While any character can harvest these herbs to limited effect, characters with certain skills and class abilities have strong bonuses and can even plant their own herb seeds. Besides herbs, characters can also collect plant seeds, to either donate to farmers (for a small alignment shift to law) or plant in dungeons, to grow trees (useful for making bridges or fletching
).
Death of player characters is meant to be permanent
. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefile
s to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.
of this version appeared in 2006. Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development and betas have been released.
Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code
is unavailable. Despite earlier announcing that the source code would be published after the release of version 1.0, Biskup later chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants. Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture. Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.
Despite Biskup's decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup has dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.
group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue
, Angband or Moria
) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value
and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve
by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad
which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptop
s). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
game by Thomas Biskup
first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos
that invade the world of Ancardia.
Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII
graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeon
s. Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.
from ten races and twenty character class
es, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay, in both subtle and obvious ways. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system, allowing further customization of characters, based on a hierarchical system of prerequisites.
During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quest
s. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment
(lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC
and deity interaction with the character. How one solves a quest can also affect one's alignment, such that a chaotic character seeking redemption can eventually become lawful through his or her actions (or vice versa).
ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure game
s like Zork
as to the hack-and-slash
of sibling games like Angband.
Besides background corruption, some powerful chaotic artifacts can actually cause the character to become corrupted merely by carrying them. Other, less powerful chaotic artifacts only corrupt when actively invoked or wielded. Generally, most artifacts and magic items are safe to carry and use, and only the most powerful items affect corruption rates.
. While any character can harvest these herbs to limited effect, characters with certain skills and class abilities have strong bonuses and can even plant their own herb seeds. Besides herbs, characters can also collect plant seeds, to either donate to farmers (for a small alignment shift to law) or plant in dungeons, to grow trees (useful for making bridges or fletching
).
Death of player characters is meant to be permanent
. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefile
s to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.
of this version appeared in 2006. Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development and betas have been released.
Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code
is unavailable. Despite earlier announcing that the source code would be published after the release of version 1.0, Biskup later chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants. Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture. Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.
Despite Biskup's decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup has dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.
group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue
, Angband or Moria
) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value
and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve
by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad
which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptop
s). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
game by Thomas Biskup
first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos
that invade the world of Ancardia.
Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII
graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeon
s. Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.
from ten races and twenty character class
es, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay, in both subtle and obvious ways. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system, allowing further customization of characters, based on a hierarchical system of prerequisites.
During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quest
s. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment
(lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC
and deity interaction with the character. How one solves a quest can also affect one's alignment, such that a chaotic character seeking redemption can eventually become lawful through his or her actions (or vice versa).
ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure game
s like Zork
as to the hack-and-slash
of sibling games like Angband.
Besides background corruption, some powerful chaotic artifacts can actually cause the character to become corrupted merely by carrying them. Other, less powerful chaotic artifacts only corrupt when actively invoked or wielded. Generally, most artifacts and magic items are safe to carry and use, and only the most powerful items affect corruption rates.
. While any character can harvest these herbs to limited effect, characters with certain skills and class abilities have strong bonuses and can even plant their own herb seeds. Besides herbs, characters can also collect plant seeds, to either donate to farmers (for a small alignment shift to law) or plant in dungeons, to grow trees (useful for making bridges or fletching
).
Death of player characters is meant to be permanent
. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefile
s to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.
of this version appeared in 2006. Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development and betas have been released.
Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code
is unavailable. Despite earlier announcing that the source code would be published after the release of version 1.0, Biskup later chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants. Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture. Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.
Despite Biskup's decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup has dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.
group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue
, Angband or Moria
) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value
and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve
by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad
which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptop
s). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
game by Thomas Biskup
Thomas Biskup
Thomas Biskup is a German software engineer and computer scientist. He is the creator and developer of Ancient Domains of Mystery, a popular computer roleplaying game....
first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos
Chaos (cosmogony)
Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....
that invade the world of Ancardia.
Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeon
Dungeon
A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period...
s. Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.
Story
ADOM takes place in the fictional world of Ancardia, in the mountainous Drakalor Chain. For 6,000 years, it has known relative peace, but recently reports have spread of the appearance of dangerous dungeons and frightening monsters. Khelavaster, a wise sage, discovers an ancient prophecy regarding the Coming of Chaos and propagates it to the peoples of the world. It speaks of a champion who will defend the world from the forces of Chaos in the Drakalor Chain. Hearing of this prophecy, many would-be heroes set out. The player assumes control of one such adventurer.Gameplay
ADOM presents an initial choice of one (male or female) player characterPlayer character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
from ten races and twenty character class
Character class
In role-playing games, a common method of arbitrating the capabilities of different game characters is to assign each one to a character class. A character class aggregates several abilities and aptitudes, and may also sometimes detail aspects of background and social standing or impose behaviour...
es, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay, in both subtle and obvious ways. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system, allowing further customization of characters, based on a hierarchical system of prerequisites.
During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quest
Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
s. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment
Alignment (role-playing games)
In some role-playing games, alignment is a categorisation of the moral and ethical perspective of the player characters, non-player characters, monsters, and societies in the game....
(lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
and deity interaction with the character. How one solves a quest can also affect one's alignment, such that a chaotic character seeking redemption can eventually become lawful through his or her actions (or vice versa).
ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s like Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
as to the hack-and-slash
Hack and slash
Hack and slash or hack and slay, abbreviated H&S or HnS, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat. "Hack and slash" was originally used to describe an aspect of pen-and-paper role-playing games , carrying over from there to MUDs, MMORPGs, and video games in general...
of sibling games like Angband.
Corruption
The forces of chaos that have infiltrated Ancardia corrupt both the surrounding landscape and occasionally the player's character, causing mutations, such as antennae or a tail growing on the PC (Player Character). Some mutations are helpful, while others make the game much harder; many have elements of both. Players need to be resourceful and adaptable due to the randomness of these mutations. While there are limited opportunities in the game to mitigate or remove corruption effects, taking too long to close the chaos gate causes the corruption rate to increase dramatically. After becoming fully corrupted, the game ends, as the character has become a "writhing mass of primal chaos". The chaotic ending requires the character to be almost fully corrupted.Besides background corruption, some powerful chaotic artifacts can actually cause the character to become corrupted merely by carrying them. Other, less powerful chaotic artifacts only corrupt when actively invoked or wielded. Generally, most artifacts and magic items are safe to carry and use, and only the most powerful items affect corruption rates.
Herbs
Herbs growing on some levels can be used to provide great benefits to the player. The growth of the herbs follows a slight modification of Conway's Game of LifeConway's Game of Life
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970....
. While any character can harvest these herbs to limited effect, characters with certain skills and class abilities have strong bonuses and can even plant their own herb seeds. Besides herbs, characters can also collect plant seeds, to either donate to farmers (for a small alignment shift to law) or plant in dungeons, to grow trees (useful for making bridges or fletching
Fletching
Fletching is the aerodynamic stabilization of arrows or darts with materials such as feathers, each piece of which is referred to as a fletch. The word is related to the French word flèche, meaning "arrow," via Old French; the ultimate root is Frankish fliukka...
).
Smithing
Players can improve their items through various methods, such as smithing or magical enhancement. Similarly, many items can be damaged or destroyed as a result of combat or other hazards. While special artifacts can not be damaged or destroyed, they are also immune to any form of improvement. This presents a unique dilemma to characters who specialize in smithing: should they use powerful artifacts or enhanced items of their own design? It is possible for a patient, highly skilled smith to enhance weapons and armor to levels beyond that of most artifacts, but the time required can cause a character to suffer more corruptions.Monster Memory
A "Monster Memory" records the character's (not the player's!) knowledge about creatures in the game, becoming increasingly detailed as the player defeats more of each monster. Statistics such as hit points, experience value, and speed are revealed, with corresponding observed highs, lows, and averages. Besides the in-game statistics, fan-submitted descriptions of every monster in the game are presented, sometimes with hints on strengths and weaknesses.Difficulty
No matter how powerful players get, there is always a way for them to die if they become careless. In rare cases, instant deaths are possible from using cursed equipment or gaining the "doomed" intrinsic. Some monsters have powerful abilities that need specific counters, necessitating a change in strategy from traditional roguelike games. Some items have powerful effects on monsters. Undead beings are burnt to ash by holy symbols, and chaos beings are badly hurt by thrown potions of cure corruption. Strengths and weaknesses are often revealed in the monster memory and through rumors.Death of player characters is meant to be permanent
Permanent death
In role-playing video games , permanent death is a situation in which player characters die permanently and are removed from the game...
. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefile
Saved game
A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped...
s to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.
Development
Development of ADOM started on July 12, 1994 and continued steadily since until November 20, 2002. Core development on the game stopped with the release of version 1.1.1. Beta-quality ports to Mac OS XMac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
of this version appeared in 2006. Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development and betas have been released.
Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
is unavailable. Despite earlier announcing that the source code would be published after the release of version 1.0, Biskup later chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants. Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture. Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.
Despite Biskup's decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup has dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.
Reception
ADOM has established a strong fan base that started gathering since 1997 at UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue
Rogue (computer game)
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game first developed by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading...
, Angband or Moria
Moria (computer game)
Moria is a roguelike computer game based heavily on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings. The game's objective is to kill a Balrog, presumably Durin's Bane, deep within the Mines of Moria. A later port of Moria called Umoria inspired the Angband roguelike game...
) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value
Replay value
Replay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value is used to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve
Learning curve
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the initial attempts, and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each...
by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad
Numeric keypad
A numeric keypad, numpad or tenkey for short, is the small, palm-sized, seventeen key section of a computer keyboard, usually on the very far right. The numeric keypad features digits 0 to 9, addition , subtraction , multiplication and division symbols, a decimal point and Num Lock and Enter keys...
which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
External links
Ancient Domains of Mystery, or ADOM, is a roguelikeRoguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
game by Thomas Biskup
Thomas Biskup
Thomas Biskup is a German software engineer and computer scientist. He is the creator and developer of Ancient Domains of Mystery, a popular computer roleplaying game....
first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos
Chaos (cosmogony)
Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....
that invade the world of Ancardia.
Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeon
Dungeon
A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period...
s. Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.
Story
ADOM takes place in the fictional world of Ancardia, in the mountainous Drakalor Chain. For 6,000 years, it has known relative peace, but recently reports have spread of the appearance of dangerous dungeons and frightening monsters. Khelavaster, a wise sage, discovers an ancient prophecy regarding the Coming of Chaos and propagates it to the peoples of the world. It speaks of a champion who will defend the world from the forces of Chaos in the Drakalor Chain. Hearing of this prophecy, many would-be heroes set out. The player assumes control of one such adventurer.Gameplay
ADOM presents an initial choice of one (male or female) player characterPlayer character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
from ten races and twenty character class
Character class
In role-playing games, a common method of arbitrating the capabilities of different game characters is to assign each one to a character class. A character class aggregates several abilities and aptitudes, and may also sometimes detail aspects of background and social standing or impose behaviour...
es, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay, in both subtle and obvious ways. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system, allowing further customization of characters, based on a hierarchical system of prerequisites.
During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quest
Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
s. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment
Alignment (role-playing games)
In some role-playing games, alignment is a categorisation of the moral and ethical perspective of the player characters, non-player characters, monsters, and societies in the game....
(lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
and deity interaction with the character. How one solves a quest can also affect one's alignment, such that a chaotic character seeking redemption can eventually become lawful through his or her actions (or vice versa).
ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s like Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
as to the hack-and-slash
Hack and slash
Hack and slash or hack and slay, abbreviated H&S or HnS, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat. "Hack and slash" was originally used to describe an aspect of pen-and-paper role-playing games , carrying over from there to MUDs, MMORPGs, and video games in general...
of sibling games like Angband.
Corruption
The forces of chaos that have infiltrated Ancardia corrupt both the surrounding landscape and occasionally the player's character, causing mutations, such as antennae or a tail growing on the PC (Player Character). Some mutations are helpful, while others make the game much harder; many have elements of both. Players need to be resourceful and adaptable due to the randomness of these mutations. While there are limited opportunities in the game to mitigate or remove corruption effects, taking too long to close the chaos gate causes the corruption rate to increase dramatically. After becoming fully corrupted, the game ends, as the character has become a "writhing mass of primal chaos". The chaotic ending requires the character to be almost fully corrupted.Besides background corruption, some powerful chaotic artifacts can actually cause the character to become corrupted merely by carrying them. Other, less powerful chaotic artifacts only corrupt when actively invoked or wielded. Generally, most artifacts and magic items are safe to carry and use, and only the most powerful items affect corruption rates.
Herbs
Herbs growing on some levels can be used to provide great benefits to the player. The growth of the herbs follows a slight modification of Conway's Game of LifeConway's Game of Life
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970....
. While any character can harvest these herbs to limited effect, characters with certain skills and class abilities have strong bonuses and can even plant their own herb seeds. Besides herbs, characters can also collect plant seeds, to either donate to farmers (for a small alignment shift to law) or plant in dungeons, to grow trees (useful for making bridges or fletching
Fletching
Fletching is the aerodynamic stabilization of arrows or darts with materials such as feathers, each piece of which is referred to as a fletch. The word is related to the French word flèche, meaning "arrow," via Old French; the ultimate root is Frankish fliukka...
).
Smithing
Players can improve their items through various methods, such as smithing or magical enhancement. Similarly, many items can be damaged or destroyed as a result of combat or other hazards. While special artifacts can not be damaged or destroyed, they are also immune to any form of improvement. This presents a unique dilemma to characters who specialize in smithing: should they use powerful artifacts or enhanced items of their own design? It is possible for a patient, highly skilled smith to enhance weapons and armor to levels beyond that of most artifacts, but the time required can cause a character to suffer more corruptions.Monster Memory
A "Monster Memory" records the character's (not the player's!) knowledge about creatures in the game, becoming increasingly detailed as the player defeats more of each monster. Statistics such as hit points, experience value, and speed are revealed, with corresponding observed highs, lows, and averages. Besides the in-game statistics, fan-submitted descriptions of every monster in the game are presented, sometimes with hints on strengths and weaknesses.Difficulty
No matter how powerful players get, there is always a way for them to die if they become careless. In rare cases, instant deaths are possible from using cursed equipment or gaining the "doomed" intrinsic. Some monsters have powerful abilities that need specific counters, necessitating a change in strategy from traditional roguelike games. Some items have powerful effects on monsters. Undead beings are burnt to ash by holy symbols, and chaos beings are badly hurt by thrown potions of cure corruption. Strengths and weaknesses are often revealed in the monster memory and through rumors.Death of player characters is meant to be permanent
Permanent death
In role-playing video games , permanent death is a situation in which player characters die permanently and are removed from the game...
. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefile
Saved game
A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped...
s to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.
Development
Development of ADOM started on July 12, 1994 and continued steadily since until November 20, 2002. Core development on the game stopped with the release of version 1.1.1. Beta-quality ports to Mac OS XMac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
of this version appeared in 2006. Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development and betas have been released.
Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
is unavailable. Despite earlier announcing that the source code would be published after the release of version 1.0, Biskup later chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants. Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture. Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.
Despite Biskup's decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup has dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.
Reception
ADOM has established a strong fan base that started gathering since 1997 at UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue
Rogue (computer game)
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game first developed by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading...
, Angband or Moria
Moria (computer game)
Moria is a roguelike computer game based heavily on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings. The game's objective is to kill a Balrog, presumably Durin's Bane, deep within the Mines of Moria. A later port of Moria called Umoria inspired the Angband roguelike game...
) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value
Replay value
Replay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value is used to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve
Learning curve
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the initial attempts, and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each...
by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad
Numeric keypad
A numeric keypad, numpad or tenkey for short, is the small, palm-sized, seventeen key section of a computer keyboard, usually on the very far right. The numeric keypad features digits 0 to 9, addition , subtraction , multiplication and division symbols, a decimal point and Num Lock and Enter keys...
which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
External links
Ancient Domains of Mystery, or ADOM, is a roguelikeRoguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
game by Thomas Biskup
Thomas Biskup
Thomas Biskup is a German software engineer and computer scientist. He is the creator and developer of Ancient Domains of Mystery, a popular computer roleplaying game....
first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos
Chaos (cosmogony)
Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....
that invade the world of Ancardia.
Like most roguelikes, ADOM uses ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
graphics to represent the game world. It features a wilderness map that connects different types of dungeon
Dungeon
A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period...
s. Most dungeons are randomly generated on first entering. Once visited, they — with the exception of the Infinite Dungeon — do not change when re-entered during play.
Story
ADOM takes place in the fictional world of Ancardia, in the mountainous Drakalor Chain. For 6,000 years, it has known relative peace, but recently reports have spread of the appearance of dangerous dungeons and frightening monsters. Khelavaster, a wise sage, discovers an ancient prophecy regarding the Coming of Chaos and propagates it to the peoples of the world. It speaks of a champion who will defend the world from the forces of Chaos in the Drakalor Chain. Hearing of this prophecy, many would-be heroes set out. The player assumes control of one such adventurer.Gameplay
ADOM presents an initial choice of one (male or female) player characterPlayer character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
from ten races and twenty character class
Character class
In role-playing games, a common method of arbitrating the capabilities of different game characters is to assign each one to a character class. A character class aggregates several abilities and aptitudes, and may also sometimes detail aspects of background and social standing or impose behaviour...
es, the combination of which strongly affects gameplay, in both subtle and obvious ways. Among other traits, character development includes experience levels, statistics, and skills. Version 1.1.0 introduced a talent system, allowing further customization of characters, based on a hierarchical system of prerequisites.
During adventures, a player is likely to explore many areas and complete multiple quest
Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
s. Which quests are available may depend on character experience level or alignment
Alignment (role-playing games)
In some role-playing games, alignment is a categorisation of the moral and ethical perspective of the player characters, non-player characters, monsters, and societies in the game....
(lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Alignment also affects NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
and deity interaction with the character. How one solves a quest can also affect one's alignment, such that a chaotic character seeking redemption can eventually become lawful through his or her actions (or vice versa).
ADOM offers multiple ways of winning, which vary in difficulty. The regular ending that appeared first in ADOM development, consists of locating and closing the gate through which the chaos forces infiltrate the game world Ancardia. The player also has the option to enter the gate, providing access to special endings, which are generally considered more difficult to accomplish. ADOM's quest-centric, plot-driven structure owes as much to adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s like Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
as to the hack-and-slash
Hack and slash
Hack and slash or hack and slay, abbreviated H&S or HnS, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat. "Hack and slash" was originally used to describe an aspect of pen-and-paper role-playing games , carrying over from there to MUDs, MMORPGs, and video games in general...
of sibling games like Angband.
Corruption
The forces of chaos that have infiltrated Ancardia corrupt both the surrounding landscape and occasionally the player's character, causing mutations, such as antennae or a tail growing on the PC (Player Character). Some mutations are helpful, while others make the game much harder; many have elements of both. Players need to be resourceful and adaptable due to the randomness of these mutations. While there are limited opportunities in the game to mitigate or remove corruption effects, taking too long to close the chaos gate causes the corruption rate to increase dramatically. After becoming fully corrupted, the game ends, as the character has become a "writhing mass of primal chaos". The chaotic ending requires the character to be almost fully corrupted.Besides background corruption, some powerful chaotic artifacts can actually cause the character to become corrupted merely by carrying them. Other, less powerful chaotic artifacts only corrupt when actively invoked or wielded. Generally, most artifacts and magic items are safe to carry and use, and only the most powerful items affect corruption rates.
Herbs
Herbs growing on some levels can be used to provide great benefits to the player. The growth of the herbs follows a slight modification of Conway's Game of LifeConway's Game of Life
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970....
. While any character can harvest these herbs to limited effect, characters with certain skills and class abilities have strong bonuses and can even plant their own herb seeds. Besides herbs, characters can also collect plant seeds, to either donate to farmers (for a small alignment shift to law) or plant in dungeons, to grow trees (useful for making bridges or fletching
Fletching
Fletching is the aerodynamic stabilization of arrows or darts with materials such as feathers, each piece of which is referred to as a fletch. The word is related to the French word flèche, meaning "arrow," via Old French; the ultimate root is Frankish fliukka...
).
Smithing
Players can improve their items through various methods, such as smithing or magical enhancement. Similarly, many items can be damaged or destroyed as a result of combat or other hazards. While special artifacts can not be damaged or destroyed, they are also immune to any form of improvement. This presents a unique dilemma to characters who specialize in smithing: should they use powerful artifacts or enhanced items of their own design? It is possible for a patient, highly skilled smith to enhance weapons and armor to levels beyond that of most artifacts, but the time required can cause a character to suffer more corruptions.Monster Memory
A "Monster Memory" records the character's (not the player's!) knowledge about creatures in the game, becoming increasingly detailed as the player defeats more of each monster. Statistics such as hit points, experience value, and speed are revealed, with corresponding observed highs, lows, and averages. Besides the in-game statistics, fan-submitted descriptions of every monster in the game are presented, sometimes with hints on strengths and weaknesses.Difficulty
No matter how powerful players get, there is always a way for them to die if they become careless. In rare cases, instant deaths are possible from using cursed equipment or gaining the "doomed" intrinsic. Some monsters have powerful abilities that need specific counters, necessitating a change in strategy from traditional roguelike games. Some items have powerful effects on monsters. Undead beings are burnt to ash by holy symbols, and chaos beings are badly hurt by thrown potions of cure corruption. Strengths and weaknesses are often revealed in the monster memory and through rumors.Death of player characters is meant to be permanent
Permanent death
In role-playing video games , permanent death is a situation in which player characters die permanently and are removed from the game...
. The game exits after saving, effectively limiting savefile
Saved game
A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped...
s to one per character, and the savefile is erased upon loading.
Development
Development of ADOM started on July 12, 1994 and continued steadily since until November 20, 2002. Core development on the game stopped with the release of version 1.1.1. Beta-quality ports to Mac OS XMac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
of this version appeared in 2006. Plans for future versions have not been announced, yet a next-generation successor to ADOM, called JADE, is in development and betas have been released.
Although ADOM is available free of charge, unlike most roguelikes its source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
is unavailable. Despite earlier announcing that the source code would be published after the release of version 1.0, Biskup later chose to reserve it for himself in order to retain some mystery about game operation and to curtail the spread of unsanctioned variants. Despite this stance, he is open to licensing the source to capable developers to form a commercial venture. Players meanwhile have deduced underlying mechanisms through careful experimentation and reverse-engineering by inspecting the execution flow, memory and binaries of the game, although this is something Biskup disrespects.
Despite Biskup's decision to not publish the source code to ADOM, he states in his blog (accessible on the official ADOM website) that he may be ready to reconsider his decision. In a post discussing possible events of the year 2009, he states that it is unlikely that he will work on ADOM any time soon, and is willing to discuss possible release models with the community. Thus, Biskup has dedicated a subforum on the official ADOM forums for the discussion of this matter.
Reception
ADOM has established a strong fan base that started gathering since 1997 at UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
group rec.games.roguelike.adom, sporting 2000-3000 messages monthly regularly in years of active development, although lately the activity has been ceasing.
Given that ADOM was a long-lasting development effort and new versions of the game were regularly released over the years, ADOM has received many critical reviews over many varied versions. The overall critical reception is good.
Reviewers usually compare ADOM to other roguelike games (like Rogue
Rogue (computer game)
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game first developed by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman around 1980. It was a favorite on college Unix systems in the early to mid-1980s, in part due to the procedural generation of game content. Rogue popularized dungeon crawling as a video game trope, leading...
, Angband or Moria
Moria (computer game)
Moria is a roguelike computer game based heavily on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings. The game's objective is to kill a Balrog, presumably Durin's Bane, deep within the Mines of Moria. A later port of Moria called Umoria inspired the Angband roguelike game...
) and find that ADOM offers a much deeper storyline, more manifold environment, and is generally more complex. Most note that ADOM offers very high replay value
Replay value
Replay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value is used to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
and general randomness of events that happen in the game. Overall game system design (and especially the character development system) is usually praised for its flexibility. Some reviews note low hardware requirements and freeware distribution as essential advantages.
As for downsides, there is no universal agreement. The user interface is cited to have high learning curve
Learning curve
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the initial attempts, and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each...
by some critics, while others note that it is "brilliant in its simplicity", "very practical" and "easy to navigate". Keyboard controls imply usage of the numeric keypad
Numeric keypad
A numeric keypad, numpad or tenkey for short, is the small, palm-sized, seventeen key section of a computer keyboard, usually on the very far right. The numeric keypad features digits 0 to 9, addition , subtraction , multiplication and division symbols, a decimal point and Num Lock and Enter keys...
which makes ADOM relatively hard to play on keyboards without keypads (i.e. laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s). Discussing gameplay, the same complexity and randomness that were cited as positive features are sometimes said to make ADOM very difficult for beginning players. Most reviewers agree that ADOM may be very hard to play for beginners due to the deletion of savefiles, which is uncommon for games outside the roguelike genre.
External links
- Official Site
- The ADOM Guidebook, with detailed plot
- rec.games.roguelike.adom at Google GroupsGoogle GroupsGoogle Groups is a service from Google Inc. that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. The service was started in 1995 as Deja News, and was transitioned to Google Groups after a February 2001 buyout....
- Interview with Thomas Biskup at RPG VaultVault NetworkThe Vault Network, or VN, is a game network dedicated to role-playing video games , providing gamers with information such as news, editorials, guides, hints and tips, as well as discussion...
- ADOM wiki